The work on the stretch between Taramay and Lobres has only progressed two percent since the opening of the La Herradura – Taramay stretch. In other words, virtually nothing has been accomplished on this much-needed stretch of autovia.

With the recent announcement of the ‘Tijerazo’ (Big Snip) to the public-works budget, all the mayors of the coastal towns held their collective breath, waiting to hear the Ministro de Fomento, Pepe Blanco, confirm that the A-7 would be getting the axe. He still hasn’t confirmed or denied, so these mayors, headed by the Mayor of Motril, are banding together to make war.

(More on in Three Summers More II.)

Jose Blanco, Ministro de Fomento

Patience has snapped, however, with the Chambers of Commerce Almería, Granada and Motril banding together with the Business Confederations of both provinces to demand the prompt completion of the A-7.

Quite apart from the non-appearance of the A-7, the N-340, coastal main road is falling apart and is being hastily patched up, ready to take on the onslaught of another summer of traffic.

Strangely enough, not one of the affected towns is governed by the PSOE, who hold power in the national and regional governments; i.e., La Herradura, Almuñecar, Salobreña and Motril. These main coastal towns are governed either be the CA (in the case of the first two) or by the PP (in the case of the last two.)

Does this have any real bearing? When you take into account the eight years that the PP were in power in Madrid, during which not one stretch of motorway was completed, either on the A-7 or A-44, it doesn’t seem so. Perhaps we should simply change from La Costa Tropical to La Costa Olivdada?
Which ever way you look at it, we are in for several summers of N-340 collapses, kilometric tailbacks and bottle necks where the Granada road reaches the coast, not to mention the Torrenueva gauntlet for east and westbound cars..

Train Connection
The motorway, or autovía, if you prefer, is still not complete and already our illustrious politicians are bickering over a long-promised train link between the provincial capital and Motril Port.
Mass transport, many would argue, is the solution to our mobility, contamination and transport-congestion problems, so such a train link, together with a coastal rail corridor, connecting with Málaga and Almería is quite a mouth-watering concept. Yet, it is not just an attractive alternative to reaching the coast from the hinterland; it is also a crucial necessity for our province’s poor-sister port.
Both Málaga and Almería ports, which enjoy motorway and rail communication must shudder at the though of Motril Port coming of ‘communications’ age. Both our neighbouring provinces lack the tremendous heritage pull of the Alhambra and the tourist pull of the Sierra Nevada and God forbid, they no doubt think, Granada ever getting equal terrestrial communications infrastructure!
At the beginning of last month, a political figure from the regional ruling party let slip that there would be no rail link for Motril Port, despite reiterated promises around elections time. The opposition parties and the business sector did some serious ‘simian defecation,’ and all hell broke loose.
The PSOE burnt political calories doing extraneous back peddling, claiming that the Secretary of State for Infrastructure for the Central Government, Victor Morlán’s comment (a freight-train link to the coast would be impossible and don’t even think about a passenger service) was not indicative of the Junta’s determination to bring such a link into being. The Councillor for Public Works for the Junta, Rosa Águilar, responded to questioning on the thorny subject during a parliamentary session that alternative routes were being studied but would not specify which. You see, Sr. Morlán said that the gradient would be just too steep and a lot of height had to be lost in to short a distance (700 metres in 50 km). The opposition pointed out that if you get a train up to Tibet, you sure as hell could get one down to the Costa Tropical.

Has It Rained?
Telling our readers that it has been raining continuously would be superfluous news, but what you ‘wetties’ might not know is how much in statistic values.
Take the case of Trevélez where 1,120 litres per square metre have fallen between the 18th of December (when the rains began) and the 18th of February, which is 50% higher than the rainfall collected during the whole of the previous year! Yes that’s right: 750 l/sq-m during 365 days, compared with 1,120 l/sq-m during just 60 days. A pluviometric year is measured from September to September, by the way.
For the rest of the province, the average has been a modest 468.8 l/sq-m, but which, in itself, is the most in over 30 years. Speaking with some locals, they put it at around 40, but let’s keep to the official reckoning. But talking of the locals, the elder generation have a saying that until the rocks weep, the ground hasn’t stopped drinking, which is the case now. All you have to do is look at any cutting, whether recently done or one having stood for decades and the layered rock facing is leaking water, copiously. In other words, the ground has reached and surpassed its maximum absorption capacity.
You want to know another interesting point? The water that is being shed from the province’s reservoirs, because they are reaching dangerous levels, is enough to supply the city of Granada for seven years!
Needless to say, the damage caused by flooding and earth movement has been considerable. Down Cádiz way, the motorway has disappeared under the water, thanks to the rivers breaking their banks, and only rooftops are visible. The rain in Spain falls mainly… So what is the Junta doing about it – issuing umbrellas & blotting paper? Nope, what they are doing is allotting 127 million euros to help repair the damage caused between the 21st of December and the 11th of January. Damage caused after that date will obviously have to await a later ‘aid package.’
Of the before-mentioned sum, 33 million is for agricultural damage. Around 2,274 kilometres of rural dirt tracks have been affected (that’s equivalent to driving from to Santander and back.) That sounds like as if every track has been taken out by the rain, but Andalucía has 50,215 kilometres of rural lanes, so the damaged section represent 5.4% of the total.

Bullfighters and Prostitutes
The fruit of a police operation in Cádiz and Málaga was the arrest of a bullfighter and members of his family for running a prostitution ring, Juan Pedro Galán, his sister and parents, were rumbled when the Guardia Civil followed up a tip off involving around 100 women that were being exploited in nightclubs all over the two provinces.
Operación Toscana is still ongoing, following the arrest of these 15 people and the discovery of half a million euros, hidden behind the wall of a jacuzzi in the home of the bullfighter’s parents, who ran the whole prostitution ring, together with their 39-year-old bullfighter son, Pedro, and 35-year-old daughter, Rocío.
The family, who ran the whole circus under the name of Galantería Hoteles, abused the prostitutes by making them work long hours and depriving them of over half their takings. They also fined the girls if they did not dress in a particular manner or were absent from work through sickness.

Teacher Attacked
A teacher, who was on corridor duty; i.e., one of the duties that teachers have to carry out during school hours when they are not actually teaching, spotted a lad climbing over the school fence, attempting to sneak in. The lad had been expelled from his own school and had decided to pay a visit to this neighbouring secondary school.
The teacher proceeded to tell the lad off, telling him to leave the area, but instead of climbing sheepishly back out, he beat the crap out of the teacher…
Not unsurprisingly, the teacher from IES Luis Bueno Crespo in Armilla (near Granada) reported the attack to the Guardia Civil and the school-teachers’ union expressed their total rejection of such behaviour and complete support for the victim. The union is also demanding that teachers be considered ‘public authority’ whilst carrying out their school duty, meaning that aggressors should meet the same severity of punishment as they would if they attacked a policeman.
No further information was cited in the original article concerning the attacker, probably because as a minor such information is restricted. He is probably receiving psychiatric counselling for the traumatic experience of getting blood on his fists, the poor little mite.

Bogus Student
A girl faked being the victim of extortion to cover up the fact that for the last eight years she had not been studying at university, as her parents supposed. Yep, for eight long years, Mum and Dad had been coughing up each month for her to attend university, paying for her accommodation etc, when in reality, she had never even begun her studies, bless her.
This 26-year-old lass had finished high school in Málaga and had announced that she was going to study pharmacy in Granada – the parents’ dutifully opened their wallet and purses. They continued to maintain her after she supposedly completed her university studies and knuckled down to study for the entrance exam into a public work post.
The parents’ peace of mind was shattered when she announced that her boyfriend was blackmailing her, threatening to post certain intimate photos of her on the Internet, if she did not give him money, or more accurately, if the parents’ didn’t provide the money.
The girl must have kicked herself when they insisted on marching her down to the local police station and denouncing the situation. Within no time, the police investigation blew the bottom out of her 8-year series of lies.
No only did she have to face her parents’ wrath, but she will also be appearing before a magistrate for filing a false statement before the police. The police discovered that not only was there no extortion; but that there wasn’t even a boyfriend!
The case is that the girl did begin university but soon dropped out, not letting on, preferring to live a subsidised life in Granada, far from her parents. Of course, when the university course concluded, she had a problem because upon lying to her parents that she had passed her studies and obtained her degree, the parents offered to set her up in her own chemist, which is why she invented the bit about studying for a public entrance exam and a cushy job as a state employee.
There was a limit to how long she could swing that one and after two years the parents were getting impatient, so she announced that she had passed the exam… whoopee! The parents were over the moon and accordingly turned off the money tap, however, she continued to withdraw cash using the credit card provided by her father during her studies.
When the parents asked her why she was still using the card, she invented the nasty boyfriend.

Mutual Stabbing
A young couple, both 19, decided that the best way to end their brief romance was to attack each other with sharp implements: he used a knife and she used some pretty impressive scissors.
According to the doctor’s report the lad had suffered a small wound to his side, where her scissors had ‘penetrated timidly.’ The lass had a 1-cm wound in her hand, scratches and a bruise. So it wasn’t exactly the Battle of Agincourt, was it?
Apparently he had turned up at her house in search of a present that had been left behind. One thing led to another and out came the knife and scissors. When the police arrived, alerted by a neighbour, they only found the girl and her hand wound. She said that she had stabbed her ex in the chest and he had been taken to hospital by his friends. Can’t help thinking that it would have been safer with a condom…

Autovía Work Stops
The Gorgoracha-Puntalón work ground to a stop when workers ran into unexpected, loose shale-type rock, which would double the cost and time needed to complete this controversial stretch, it was announced. Consequently, the Central Government decided that the only thing that they could do was pay off the construction company that was dealing with it and put the contract up for tender again.
The opposition party, the PP, consider that a lack of funds is the real reason behind it and that the ‘unexpected’ shale is just a convenient excuse to delay things until more lucrative times.

Noise II
The next noise-related story is about a student fight in Granada, where a confrontation between the Local Police and the inhabitants of the flat resulted in several police officers being injured. The students described the scene as ‘surreal.’
It all started when the neighbours – also university students – phoned the Local Police at seven in the morning to complain that their studious neighbours had their music loudspeakers hammering out. One of them, whose bedroom was just on the other side of a thin partition wall – had begun hammering on the noisy-neighbours front door and within moments a heated argument had broken out and all the students from both flats were standing in the corridor, arguing, for three quarters of an hour.
Yet for all the calls to reason that were offered, the noisy neighbours insisted in carrying on with their party, and so the Local Police were called.
When the police arrived at the flat of the callers, one policeman said that you could actually see the walls vibrate, so they hammered on the offending front door. The callers went back to bed without seeing what later occurred.
Now, according to the party-going neighbours, they insisted to the eight policemen who had turned up that there was no party and that they had just returned from a night out on the town and wanted to listen to a spot of music.
“They broke our front-door lock and wanted to drag us outside – it just wasn’t normal,” one of them complained. What is more, another student complained that one of the policemen was ‘really pushing his weight around,’ and had turned up with his gloves on, brandishing his truncheon. The students claimed that the policeman’s colleagues had to quieten him down as he had become very agitated. Anyway, a struggle ensued and one policeman had his glasses broken in the tussle.
The police ended up not arresting anybody and the students claimed that the police made more of a scandal than anybody, and that four patrol cars had turned up with the intention ‘looking for a fight.’
Well, it’s a tough life being a student and thanks to this fascist attack against their liberty, it’s a wonder that they manage to get any studying done… bless them.

Noise III
The last article is perhaps the most bizarre because it ended up with a neighbour attacking three men with his teeth because they were making a noise in front of his house. One of the ‘bitten’ is in hospital, awaiting a skin graft for his ear and the other two, who were changing a flat tyre when they were ‘visited’ by Mr. Jaws, are recuperating from their wounds at home.
Some people, when they go off the deep end, shout, flail about with their fists, pull out a knife or gun… or simply turn themselves into a devouring missile of malicious dental intent!. This was the case of the remarkable 29-year-old teeth terrorist – inhabitant of a block of flats in La Zubia, which is an outlying part of the city of Granada.
It was 23.30h on a Friday night when a driver had the misfortune of suffering a flat tyre… right in front of Mr. Gnashville himself. The driver had pulled over in front of a garage – the only available space nearby – and tried to change the wheel by himself, but was unable to, so he phoned his family for them to come and help him out.
The owner of the garage had seen the man below and had asked whether he needed help and received an affirmative reply, so he went down to help out the luckless driver. Soon they were both grunting in their efforts to get the wheel off.
Before long, between the driver, the helpful garage owner and family members, there were eight people engaged in changing the wheel… well, being Spain, there was probably only one and seven offering conflicting advice, but that is beside the point.
Then the Toothy One appeared fifty metres down the street, on the opposite side and began to berate them for the noise. Their chatter continued and they even pointed out that it was nothing to get irate about. Unfortunately, he didn’t agree.
He approached and allegedly launched himself against one of their number, biting his hand, leaving such a wound as to need five stitches – so it was hardly ‘a nibble on a lettuce leaf’ assault.
Before you could say, “I say, steady on, Old Chap,” he launched himself in a blizzard of teeth against another man, savaging his shoulder and drawing blood. By now, most people involved were visibly impressed as well as reasonably concerned about his next action, which didn’t take long to materialise, having by then extracted his cheerful choppers from his second victim. His third victim was attacked with conventional weapons; i.e. his hands and feet, to the relief of all but the object of his attack.
Attracted by the noise – particularly the gnashing sound, no doubt – another neighbour turned up and decided to ‘phone the Guardia Civil, although he might have hesitated and considered phoning the municipal dog pound first…
It was not a wise move, because he was next, and was mildly surprised to find some of his ear missing and teeth marks all over his mobile phone.
Luckily for everybody concerned, the assailant was dentally spent by then and chose to sit on the curb and cry his teeth out… sorry; his eyes out, which is when the Guardia Civil turned up, who gingerly arrested him, keeping extremities well away from the arrested man’s motivated mouth.

Coastal Building Moratorium?
The Regional Ombudsman, José Chamizo, is considering calling for a building freeze along the whole of the coast of Andalucía. He is also calling for a Penal Code reform that would bring tougher judicial retribution of those guilty of urban development offences.
He warned that the ‘exceptional value’ of the coast and its ‘extraordinary fragility’ had been damaged by the ‘massive occupation’ land adjacent to the Zona de Dominio Público Maritima-Terrestre (protected area extending several hundred metres above and below the high-water line). For this reason he considers it necessary to impose a building moratorium along the coast, which would permit the only exception, which would be buildings of public use. The affected areas would be the first 500 metres above the shoreline.
He hoped that such a freeze would give public bodies and the private sector time to decide what kind of urban-development model they want to apply to the future. He also pointed out that despite the slowing of urban expansion due to the economical downturn, parts of the coast have already become unrecognisable. Fortunately, he pointed out, there are still parts of the coast within the province of Cádiz that have escaped the worst ravages of uncontrolled building speculation. His main concern, however, is that the sort of speculation that has taken place along the coast will now be turned against the hinterland.
He complained that despite the Ley de Costas having seen its 20th birthday, around 20% of the coast of Andalucía has still had an official delimitation applied and he thus urges the relevant administration to get its bloody finger out, so to speak.

Granny’s Bank Cards
Six young girls were arrested for using one of their grandmother’s credit cards and ID card to buy goods in shops without the card owner’s consent. The girls, from Granada and Peligros, are all aged between 17 and 21.
Although the girls stole the cards in October, the victim didn’t realise that they were missing until the 22nd of last month. The grandmother made the discovery when she saw on her bankbook that she had been charged 320 euros for a purchase that she had never made.
The Guardia Civil were able to track down the purchases to two gasoline stations and two shops in the centre of Granada, and thanks to the CCTV’s in these premises, they soon nabbed the girls between the 7th and the 11th of November. The camera at the gasoline station recorded the number plate of the car, whose driver had used the missing card to fill the tank. With the number plate, it was a matter of minutes before the police had the name of the first girl arrested.
The granddaughter of the woman had allegedly changed the photo on the ID card to that of her own, as the name almost coincided.
Guess whose name won’t be on Granny’s will as a beneficiary?

Two Young Boys Arrested
The two boys had allegedly destroyed one of the few remaining public phones in the city of Granada, causing damages of around 363 euros, to gain a haul of 1.20 euros – yep, that’s right, one euro, 20 cents. The Public Prosecutor for Minors is recommending a 2-year probation period.
The surge of mobile phone ownership has virtually done away with public pay phones and the ones that do still exist get little use; hence the pittance that was in the cashbox of the telephone cabin.
Finally, if the two youngsters are found guilty, their parents will have to reimburse Telefónica the 363 euros needed to repair the phone.

Talking of the Campo…
Suddenly there is an abundance of volunteers to harvest the olive crops – before few would deign to consider such a job, preferring the lucrative building sector. Consequently, immigrant workers were the salvation of the farmers, who were desperate to find hands.
According to recent figures, the number of Granadinos who are looking to work this harvest has doubled, now that unemployment benefit has been exhausted in many cases.
As a direct consequence of this renewed ‘interest’ by nationals, immigrant labour has been put on the back burner and many, realising that there simply is no work for them, are returning to their countries of origin.

Bullets for the Boys
The City Hall of Granada has ordered 50,000 pistol bullets for the Local Police. This little Christmas present will be stashed away at the Local Police headquarters, where they will be used on the firing range. Each of these blue killing machines gets to fire off approximately 100 rounds a year, bless them.

Nice Change!
It is certainly novel that a town hall is embargoed for faulting on payments… I mean, they’re always faulting on payments, but they don’t normally have their bank accounts frozen by a Judge and the sum of an outstanding debt extracted, do they? The town hall in question is the Town Hall of Cájar in the Alpujarra.
Chance would have it that the Mayor recently had to cancel a first-occupation certificate for the village’s Vice Mayor, who resigned over alleged building irregularities on his new house.
The administration’s accounts have been frozen over a debt of nearly 6,000 euros owing to a company that provided equipment for a kiddies’ play park – to be more precise, a rubber floor cover and the necessary glue, coming to 4,825 euros. The bill was submitted to Raúl Montoya, who is the chap that resigned, by the way.
No payment was forthcoming, despite a litany of requests and threats. Finally, the company decided to sue the Town Hall in September. The provincial law court decided in favour of the company and ordered that the Town Hall’s bank accounts be seized. Included in the sum to be charged is 1,000 euros in court costs.
The Mayor recognised that the money was indeed owed and that it would be met within days. He put the blame at the door of the dismissed Vice Mayor, whose task it was to oversee the payment, but whose ‘laxity’ allowed the situation to reach this lamentable end.

Sneaky Fines
Many people have the impression that their town halls’ fine everything that moves in a desperate attempt to get funds into the wheezing municipal accounts, and in the case of the good folk of Caserío de Cerro (northern Granada district) it certainly seems to be the case.
You see, the Local Police are slapping fines on them for using the only road that they have to gain access to their houses, thanks to sprawling road works created by the metro project.
Every day the locals have to use this one remaining street to be able to reach their homes and garages, even though there is a no-entry sign at the entrance to the street. However, the no-entry sign also bears text reading: accept to authorised vehicles. Well, if they live there, you would think that they are authorised, wouldn’t you?
When you take into account that some residents have to use this street several times a day, clocking up a 60-euro fine each time, you can imagine just how annoyed they are.
The Local Police, it seems, don’t even bother to stop the cars to inform the drivers, but limit themselves to noting down the number plates as they pass, with glee…

Talking of Fines…
A mother has been fined 120 euros for shouting in public that her son’s female teacher was a racist. The incident occurred about a couple of months ago at the Colegio Julio Rodríguez in Armilla (Granada).
The mother had stormed into the school to berate the said female teacher because her son said that she had ‘had a go at him,’ even though, in reality, the teacher didn’t even have this pupil in her class, so she was left wondering what the mad cow was going on about.
She had just come out of class and suddenly the mother started shouting, “Mierda de Maestra (shitty teacher), “No sierves como maestra” (You no good as a teacher), “Eres un racista” (you’re a racist).
The teacher could have let it go as just another case of verbal aggression from parents, but after thinking about it, decided to sue the woman, not so much for her own benefit, but so that it would serve as an example.
The teacher didn’t demand any compensation and the mother fully admitted her culpability, which made the whole thing go through very quickly.

And talking of Schools…
A 3-year-old child in the city of Sevilla decided to return home from kindergarten and managed to arrive home, by himself, without anybody at the school having realising that he was missing. The parents were not impressed.
In fact, they went ballistic, firing off letters of complaints to the Regional Education Board, the City Hall of Sevilla and the state-run primary school CEIP Maestra Natalia Albanes.
On the said day, when classes concluded at 13.45, the pupils that were to have school dinners – our globe trotter amongst them – were to be accompanied to the school dining room. But in the case of the child in question, he turned up at the doorstep of his home at 14.40, having walked between 500 and 600 metres home.

Reluctant to Return
Do you remember that article that we ran about a public functionary (Tax-Office clerk) that sneaked a camera into the women’s toilet to secretly film them? Well, he’s not over keen to return to work, it seems, now that he can. And to avoid having to return, he has demanded that he receives a month’s paid holiday owing to him for 2009.
He was sentenced to 6-months suspension by the disciplinary board, which he has completed, and as his case has still not reached the law courts, then the Tax Office has no further reason to deny him his post, until his case is heard, or better said, re-heard. You see, five of the ladies caught on film could not be identified and therefore did not have the opportunity to bring their own suits against the man, who admitted to installing the cameras. For that reason, a sentence has still not been handed down until the five come forward, or not, and have the possibility to file their own suits against him.
In the tax office in Calle Tablas there are 130 personnel, of which 70 are women. The women staff, as well as some of their male counterparts, have threatened to walk out en masse if Mr F.J.T.J. (Furtive Jiving in The John?) shows his face at work. So, as you can imagine, although it might seem a bit of a cheek on the part of the man, the solution of his taking a month’s holiday comes as a welcome respite to impending doom. It is hoped that the paperwork for his transfer to another department will come through before he concludes his month’s leave…

Quite a Few!
Have you ever wondered just how many condoms you can fit in a car – you know, filling every available space, right up to above the rear-view mirror? Well of course you have!
Fear not, because thanks to the much-needed work done by university student in Granada, you will now be able to inform those around you – incurring much admiration – the exact number!
Now, if you think that I’m going to spill the beans right off, at the very beginning of the article, then you’ve just over-dosed on optimism, my fine furtive friends! You’re just going to have to read to the very end – ha!
The organisers had parked a bulging car in the forecourt and posed the question that would require university-level mathematics to solve. The prize was the car itself, although you could probably make more money selling the condoms within than by selling the car, admittedly.
The organiser, by the way, was the condom manufacturer, who also supplied the car. They had set up a small booth where the students were invited to submit their answer.
And here’s the answer… wait for it… I don’t know. Sorry, the answer still has not been given and so, like me, you’re just going to have to wait to find out. I’m so dead.

Insurance Fraud Increasing
It is always just a tad suspicious if an insurance policy covers up to 600 euros, the claimant just happened to have 600 euros in their handbag or wallet, which was stolen. Yet, you’d be surprised to learn that there are many such transparently obvious false claims made in these economically meagre times.
The favourite is the ‘snatched-bag’ claim, where the claimant was quite happily walking along and a swarthy gentleman in desperate need of a shave and image consultant, snatched the handbag, with its improbably expensive contents: Marbella, jet-set, designer sunglasses, a NASA-level, mega-wow, mobile telephone and, of course, buckets of cash.
During 2008, for example, investigators working for insurance companies tracked down false claims to the tune of 200,000 euros on a national level. These cases were discovered because the 16 major insurance companies in Spain investigated 76,569 cases. These false claims range from muggings, burglaries, house fires and, of course, motorcar accidents.
In the case of road accidents, it doesn’t matter how minor a collision was, everybody seems to have suffered whiplash, strangely enough.
And talking of cars, one of the recent favourites is car fires: depending on the type of motor insurance, if the car is less than two years, they’re liable to receive the full value of the car and the money received goes to paying off the loan for the car that they could not pay anymore.
As we said in the title, the numbers of fraudulent insurance claims is on the rise because of the economic down turn: during 2008, the Guardia Civil arrested 37 people for having made false claims, while in just the first nine months of 2009, there were already over 50 arrests.

The flooding was not widespread, but mainly hit the Playa Granada area and the port, which are close to sea level. Another place that will certainly remember the abnormally rainy days of Christmas 2009 is the lorry park just behind, Tropen, next to the Granada junction.

As luck would have it, the side of an irrigation channel gave way and the water plunged into a lorry park, which had the double handicap of being lower in level than the surrounding land and completely enclosed by a brick wall. The result was, as can be seen in the photograph, was the water almost reaching as high as the windscreens on a parked articulated lorry. Motril firemen put the maximum water level as three meters. Cars also use the parking and at the time there was a total of 32 vehicles in the compound.

The housing estate in the port area, Santa Adela, earned the nickname ‘Little Venice’ during those five days of continuous rain, in which 400 litres per square metre was recorded. The locals have been demanding that the authorities do something about the inadequate and obsolete infrastructure and this wet nightmare only served as an embarrassing I-told-you-so for the Mayor.

Down on Playa Granada, firemen had to break down parts of the paseo low wall to let trapped water drain out – and there was a lot of draining out to do. Probably one of the most popular photos was one of a local person making his way down the main street in his canoe.
So, can this disaster be put down to abnormally high rainfall, or can the incompetence of Man also be included in the blame game? The answer is affirmative; Man is also responsible, because as it has been freely admitted by the Town Hall and experts, the demise of cultivation on the vega, which runs behind both Santa Adela and Playa Granada, has been a prime culprit here.

It should be remembered that the vega is merely reclaimed land from the sea, or better said, an estuary that silted up and became arable land, with a propensity to flood, which is why it was ideal for Motril’s sugar-cane cultivation. But with the demise of this traditional crop, the land has not only lost vegetation with a high absorption capacity, but irrigation infrastructure, such as drainage channels and embankments have been abandoned, falling into total disrepair.

Urban expansion in La Herradura, Almuñécar, Salobreña and Motril has spilled out onto parts of the municipalities which are, for the above reason perhaps, not suitable urban development and it is only when Nature reminds us of the function of a flood valley that we are brought face to face with this uncomfortable fact.
Talking of high water, locals wasted their combined breath trying to warn the regional and provincial authorities that it was silly to build the beach back up with sand in November, with the Spring and Autumn gales lying between then and summer. A total of 71,000 cubic metres of sand was moved by lorry from Playa Cable to Playa de Granada… for nothing, because it has now gone, thank
(Photos courtesy of Infocostatropical and Tropen)

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